|
|
| WHY GO TO COLLEGE? Anne Matthews takes your questions on what really goes on within campus walls.... May 27, 1997 |
|---|
Questions asked
in this forum:
How will new technologies change educational opportunities? To what extent do social, moral and political biases of faculty and administrators direct a college's budget? What is the purpose of a core curriculum? Do the present cost differentials between private and state universities and community colleges perpetuate inequality ? Are there any substantial college reform proposals ? Why is a professor's research encouraged more than his or her teaching skills? How does grade inflation effect the quality of education at prestigious universities? Additional comments....
NewsHour Backgrounders
May 1, 1997:
A discussion on the rising cost of higher education .
February 10, 1997
Experts discuss President Clinton's plans for college tuition assistance.
December 26, 1996
A NewsHour panel scrutinizes the Democrat's plans for the 105th Congress' education initiatives.
EXTERNAL LINKS:
Financial aid links for higher education.
The first family will spend almost $31,000 a year to send Chelsea Clinton to the college of her choice: Stanford. That's a down payment on a house, a luxury car, or an entire middle-class salary per year. A recent study shows that over the past 20 years tuition has increased, on average, twice as fast as the overall cost of living. Are parents and students getting their money's worth?
Studies show that faculty salaries are going up - often due to bidding wars for big-name professors and a bureaucracy that is growing six times as fast as the number of students. At the same time, many students are going through college without speaking to a senior professor, or sitting in a classroom of less than a hundred students.
In her new book, "Bright College Years: Inside the American Campus Today," Anne Matthews goes into the faculty meetings and first year dorms to glimpse real life on college campuses. Her goal was to track the critical issues facing academia: money, crime, power, honor, tradition, and the nature of true learning.
She found that most universities have bowed to commercial pressures, spending more money on public relations than on student aid, and creating a "Burger King Chair in American Enterprise" to spur corporate sponsorships. Quoting a statistical profile from The Chronicle of Higher Education, Matthews points out that today's freshmen class is not the diverse bastion of liberal thought that some may expect: Eighty-two percent are white. Twenty-six percent born-again Christian - over a fourth want married women back in the home. There are about as many students majoring in business as there are in all the liberal arts combined.
This forum addresses topics such as: What should we expect from a college degree? Are universities preparing students for the hi-tech workplace and global economy?
Anne Matthews grew up on a college campus. "Bright College Years" is based on four years of research and more than 400 interviews at dozens of campuses. Matthews was a Pulitzer Prize finalist for her 1993 book "Where the Buffalo Roam," and she contributes frequently to The New York Times Magazine.
Questions asked in this forum:
How will new technologies change educational opportunities? To what extent do social, moral and political biases of faculty and administrators direct a college's budget? What is the purpose of a core curriculum? Do the present cost differentials between private and state universities and community colleges perpetuate inequality ? Are there any substantial college reform proposals ? Why is a professor's research encouraged more than his or her teaching skills? How does grade inflation effect the quality of education at prestigious universities? Additional comments....
Support the kind of journalism done by the NewsHour...Become a member of your local PBS station. PBS Online Privacy Policy
Copyright ©1996- MacNeil/Lehrer Productions. All Rights Reserved.
